Plastic Snow Falling in the USA?

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Yesterday, my cousin sent me a message on Facebook containing a video of a guy named Daniel Highberger claiming some plastic like substance was believed to be in the snow that fell at his home in Roanoke, VA on March 21, 2018.

The video has since been removed but I had posted it to my Facebook page and it got mixed reviews. Some believed that snow is supposed to turn black when melted with a lighter, that it was just soot from the lighter. And some believed it could be nitrogen in the atmosphere mixing with the snow causing these reactions, etc.

A search on YouTube, etc., also turns up many, many others making these claims of ‘Fake Plastic Snow’ and doing the ‘Snow Lighter Test,’ all of which, I found, are dated within the past couple years. I, being from a state in the USA that may receive snow once every ten years, was curious.

So, I then found this video of a lady melting snow with a lighter she had collected in Alaska:

As you can see, it did not turn black and, I am taking her word for it, but it did not smell like plastic either.

So, I decided to do a little more research and this is what I found:

There is a substance called Military Chaff. It is made of Mylar (fiberglass) and metal particles, among other things, and it is sprayed from aircraft to deter radar. Here is a compilation video of news channels reporting on it from 2012:

This next article is from the American Meteorological Society and it was written in 2014. (You don’t have to read the whole article because it is very long but it should give you the general idea that this is a very real occurrence.) Please click the link to read the article:

So, my conclusion is: The materials in the snow are plastic or some form of it. Now, I’m not saying that the actual ice precipitation that is falling from the sky over the USA is all Military Chaff. I am, however, suggesting that the Mylar (fiberglass) particles could certainly be what the char and burning plastic smell is in this ‘snow’. We can’t be so foolish as to believe our military isn’t testing and perfecting ways to scramble radar with the tensions of North Korea and so many other countries right at our door. And how much technological advancement do you think could have been done on this Military Chaff in between now and 2012 when the news channels were reporting on it? What do you think? Feel free to comment.